


whereon their faultless fingers fall

by TolkienGirl



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Angband, Angst, Bad Decisions, Brothers, Feelings, Gen, Hair, Hands, Kinslaying, Maedhros's Daddy Issues, Maglor's harp - Freeform, Post-Rescue from Thangorodrim, Title from Mythopoeia, everyone's daddy issues, questionable parenting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-22
Updated: 2019-02-22
Packaged: 2019-11-03 21:15:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17885330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl
Summary: Makalaure's hands, and what they can and cannot do.





	whereon their faultless fingers fall

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mythopoeia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mythopoeia/gifts).



> Happy (early) Birthday to the best Silm-lover!!

Mastery comes naturally, necessarily, to the sons of Fëanáro. This is true whether it is Maitimo and his deadly blade, or Curufinwë in his father’s smoke-edged, forge-hot shadow. It is true of Tyelkormo and his bow and his swift hunter’s gait.

They are all beating brilliance into their futures like hammers ringing on steel, since the time they are old enough to walk.

Makalaurë, gold-cleaver, bears a name that carries all and none of these things. He can wield a sword, he can carve the facets of a gem. He can run tirelessly through wood and over wold, just as the rest can.

He cares little for any of these.

Makalaurë sings.

Makalaurë sings and the sea answers, even when they are far from its shore. Makalaurë sings, and his hands draw gold and silver and salt-flecked ocean hopes from the strings of his harp.

Oh, Makalaurë’s hands.

 

Maitimo is impatient with his braids. It is not surprising; each brother is marked from head to foot by the eager, wild, noble nature of his  _fëa_. The keenness of their father’s eyes, set in each face anew, is mingled in aspect with the way their height and stance mark them as warriors, with the way their hair marks them each as themselves.

Themselves: Tyelkormo’s loose curls, or Carnistir’s (how he hates that name) coarse horse-tail, or the smooth sweep of midnight over Curufinwë's shoulders (exactly like their father’s).

Makalaurë tends to all of them; when the younger ones are small, they like the gentle touch of his fingers, the speed with which he twists their wild locks back from their faces.

(His elder brother likes it too.)

Maitimo’s rough efforts to tame his copper mane, practical enough for hunting and fighting, do not suffice for the first-born prince.

And so it is Makalaurë who gathers his brother’s fiery tresses in hand and weaves the map of king-braids along his temples, wrapping the ends in silver thread, smoothing his fringe to one side of his perfect face.

 _I cannot wear these yet_ , Maitimo says, as bashful for once as he is always resplendent.  _I am not—_

 _I’m practicing,_ Makalaurë answers, with a smile, his fingers still flying.  _Who else will crown you, when you have not the patience to learn yourself?_

 

 _Play for me, Makalaurë_ , his mother says, when her eyes are falling shut with sleep. Clay from her day’s work rims her fingertips with red-brown dust.

And so he plays an ageless melody on strings that bear the magic, almost, of a spoken word. Someday, much too soon, when his father turns his back on Nerdanel the Wise for the last time, Makalaurë’s hand tightens around his harp, for it was she who found it for him.

 

The Ambarussa speak of their mother in hushed voices. Tyelkormo writes her letters that can never be sent. Morifinwë confides in no one; Curufinwë never speaks her name.

Maitimo walks under the stars bytimes, twisting his hands together. Makalaurë remembers it was an old habit of hers, fingers tangling and untangling, as if she might rearrange her thoughts.

 

(When the Oath is sworn, their hands stretch skyward. All their hands.)

 

How blood cakes beneath his nails, in the lines of his palms! The tang of gore is as eternal as he once believed himself to be.

A harp-string snaps. He mourns, and begs forgiveness, and hears no answer on the wind save the echoes of his desperate song.

 

 _Where is your father?_  the winds demand, and Makalaurë has no lyric for them.  _Where is Fëanár_ _o, who would lead you to the end of the world?_

He is a loyal son. Even, he is a kinslayer, gone to the depths of that loyalty.

Yet Makalaurë grieves his father in death as he loved him in life—from afar.

Still, he draws his hands across his harp, and waits for the Oath to take the rest of them. It cannot be long now; he sealed his fate, he is resigned. He cordons off his heart, so like his mother’s, and tells himself that the worst is past.

(Then it takes Maitimo.)

 

Findekáno rides to Angamando. He does so not by royal decree, nor by his father’s bidding, nor by the grace of anyone’s courage but his own.

 _He will bring back a corpse_ , Curufinwë says, his face as cold as Fëanáro’s ever was.

The rest of them are silent with guilt.

Maitimo is half-gone. Gone is all his beauty, his strength, even his wholeness. One hand was cleanly severed at the wrist.

Findekáno did what he had to. At least his blade was sharp.

Makalaurë stumbles from the healers’ tent, and covers his mouth with his hands.

(Both hands.)

 

Once again, the care of Maitimo’s hair falls to him. This time, that means clipping away the ragged, matted ends that only brush his shoulders. It was first sheared in Angamando, then. Makalaurë cringes at the humiliation of it, though it was undoubtedly one of Moringotto’s lesser punishments.

Meant to shame and defile, yes, but in a manner easily made right.

When the task is done, the copper locks cling to his fingers like clay dust. Like dried blood.

 

Their father called him Nelyafinwë, Nelyo in rare moments of affection. Their brothers call him Nelyo and Nel and, most of all, Russandol—an epessë for which Findekáno and Tyelkormo both spar for credit.

Makalaurë calls him Maitimo, and thinks naught of it—were they not both their mother’s sons in the early, happy days?—until his return.

Then, the name splits in two as it slips from his lips, and his face flushes.

“Not so true anymore, is it?” Maitimo observes, sounding almost too weary to be wry.

And what can Makalaurë say to that? His brother’s nose is broken, his delicate ears notched, his fair skin marred and branded.

 _Well-formed_ , Makalaurë thinks bitterly, and knows it now means only their ruin.

 

Maitimo wakes and sleeps and heals, after a time. Makalaurë is reading beside him one morning when, for once, no nightmares plague him.

Maitimo’s left hand, still long and long-fingered, but otherwise unlike itself, catches one of Makalaurë’s slender plaits.

“Always so even-stranded,” he says, with a half-smile on his cracked lips. Makalaurë frowns down and holds himself steady, lest he shut his eyes to block out the blackened bruises on every one of Maitimo’s knuckles.

“When yours has grown,” Makalaurë promises, “I shall tend to it again.”

“No king-braids, I think,” Maitimo answers. “I could not bear the weight of them.” But the sun pierces the window and falls on his face, and he does not flinch from it, this time. It lights what color is left in his poor shorn hair, and Makalaurë thinks,  _Still a king, always a king_ , for surely even the kings of this land carry scars.

 

Makalaurë tries to thank Findekáno and nearly loses his front teeth for his trouble.

“Save your breath,” his cousin snaps. “Save it until you walk the earth in twilight, Kánafinwë. I will hear no thanks from you and your brothers.”

The sting reaches deep between his ribs, an aching poison he deserves. “Then why do you stay, and speak civilly?” he asks, and knows the answer before he has even finished the question.

“For him,” Findekáno answers, and he trembles.

Makalaurë put a hand on his shoulder, then, and he stares at that hand later, wondering how he dared, wondering why Findekáno bore it without striking him, without even another harsh word.

Such is their family curse.

Makalaurë has been heavy with curses, of late.

He endeavors to undo one that evening, when the candles have burned low and the night is blue-dark around them.

He means to say,  _Forgive me_ , but without music, his words tumble over themselves. “If our father had lived,” Makalaurë chokes out, half-certain that the very shadows of the room have ringed themselves around his throat, “He would not have left you there.”

Maitimo is silent.

“We left you for dead, and dishonored him.” The words will last with him forever, but no longer than their truth.

“Our father,” Maitimo whispers, “Loved no ill-formed thing.”  
  
Makalaurë’s protest, his elder brother stifles with a faint shake of his head.   
  
“Nay, Káno. Do not deny it. You know as well as I—it was not in his nature.”

 _Yet he would have wanted to save you, no matter how broken_ , Makalaurë nearly cries, but something about Maitimo’s words has stilled him.

It is as close to a criticism of Fëanáro as Makalaurë has ever heard from his brother's mouth—and even now, turned more inward, more towards himself. They were as unlike as any two whom Makalaurë loved. He remembers Losgar and the flames, remembers Maitimo turned aside, eyes down but his chin lifted up, with the red print of Fëanáro’s gauntlet marked across his cheek.

It was the only time Makalaurë remembers their father striking any of them. It was not the worst thing that their father’s hands ever did.  
  
Nor Makalaurë’s, whose ink-marked poet’s hands would never touch one of his brothers save in friendship, yet who lifted flaming brands with all the rest.

How hot that fire burned!  
  
How Manwë must grieve, how Finwë must grieve. Not to mention their mother.  
  
Makalaurë sighs.  
  
“How is Findekáno?” Maitimo asks softly, when a little time has passed. Makalaurë feels half-certain that the grim warrior silence his brother feigned even before Angamando will set in soon enough, but Maitimo seems dreamlike and talkative this evening.

Likely, he does not wish to sleep. Maitimo finds little rest in sleep, these days.

Makalaurë asks, “What do you mean?”

Maitimo says, “Whenever he is here, he is so cheerful that I would my worthless heart still beat hard enough to break.”

Makalaurë thinks of Findekáno’s words of an hour ago, dagger-edged. Thinks of him as he saw him two nights since, pacing the hem of the camp. Findekáno looked like something fierce, then, his  _f_ _ëa_ almost searing the air around him, and as he walked, he wept.

“He is gladdened by your return, as are we all,” he answers. It is not a lie at its heart, only in its happiness; but cruelly, Makalaurë knows he is safe from reproach. Maitimo has never accused his brothers of lying.

Now, he bites his tattered lips. “He deserves better,” he says, “than my blood on his hands.”

 _Your blood is on all our hands_ , Makalaurë wants to shout. He hates how his own are smooth, calloused by his harp and his sword and naught else—for as years pass, gore can be washed away. They were not cracked by frostbite. They were not—oh, Ilúvatar, did the Dark One have every one of Maitimo’s fingers broken and reshaped many times over?

“Play for me,” Maitimo asks, with another torn smile. Makalaurë recognizes that look from the very dawn of their exile, when they left their mother behind. It is the look Maitimo has when he is trying to be brave. “Findekáno has sung to me as I slept, and I remembered your voice.” Then he turns his face away so that Makalaurë scarcely hears the next words. “I heard it there, too.”

Was it a trick of the Darkness?

Or a dream?

Makalaurë does not ask. He fetches his harp.

 

Here is something Makalaurë’s hands cannot do: bring his brother’s back again.

 

“They are lost,” Maitimo says, and he lifts both wrists towards his face, though only one hand may cover it.

Makalaurë’s heart bleeds too, bleeds for the cruelty of Tyelkormo’s servants and the children wandering in the dark. He rests his hands on Maitimo’s shoulders—Maitimo can now bear some touches, some kindnesses, without flinching—and steadies the brother he still considers king as silent sobs wrack him.

What manner of grief draws tears from Maitimo, from one-handed Maedhros, as skilled now with a left-handed blade as ever he was before?

 

(Makalaurë does not know if his brother weeps when Findekáno falls, too crushed in death to be properly recognized or honored.

He only knows that Maitimo sends everyone from his side, and that his eyes are never the same again.

In time, Makalaurë wonders if even the losses of Angmando were kinder than this.)

 

He ought not love one brother best.

(He does.)

 

Neither of them deserves to be happy anymore. The first Silmaril falls into the sea, and the Oath weighs heavier now than it ever did, and how long, how long until all their brothers are spent?

And yet Makalaurë’s heart, that treacherously soft thing, is lightened by the sight of his eldest brother asleep, one arm flung over his eyes like always, with two irrepressible elflings tucked against either side of him.

(They were so afraid of Maitimo at first.  _Lord Maedhros_ , they called him, their pulses fluttering like caged birds, and they clasped each other’s hands tightly.

 _He will not hurt you_ , Makalaurë promised them, Makalaurë, whose gentle nature did not prevent him from shedding blood, from driving their mother to her death.

Maitimo never wanted to hurt anyone.)

Little Elros sighs. Maitimo’s brow knots and furrows, but the dream passes away.

Makalaurë’s hands cover them with warm blankets. He has missed this: tending things.

 

He teaches the elflings their letters. He braids Maitimo’s hair. He plucks at his harp—its music as glad as ever, though the wind turns melancholy—and for a time, Makalaurë steals the happiness he does not deserve.

 

All things end. That was the one truth their father did not know.

 

“We must fulfill the Oath,” Maitimo commands—commanding himself as much as Makalaurë. In the moonlight, he is beautiful and terrible, his hair both red and silver.

Makalaurë would break it, if he could.

But his heart breaks first, and he follows his brother as ever he has: anywhere.

 

 _Gold-cleaver_ , say the winds. _What song could you not play, what melody could you not leash round the spirits of men? Who are you now? Where go you now? What have those harp-hands wrought?_

 

The Oath fulfilled; the Silmaril in his hands (in their hands). It is the worst thing Makalaurë has ever done.

Fire for one; the sea for the other. Was he not given the sea?

(Was he not given his brothers?)

Maitimo dies in anguish, without even a farewell. How hot that fire burns; how golden fever-bright.

Who else will crown him?

Maitimo dies and his fëa sails eagle-high to its resting place, an unreachable comfort for the one who remains.

Makalaurë, after all, lives.

 

Here is something Makalaurë’s hands cannot do: bring his brothers back again.

 

The scars never heal. Stiffly, he plucks at the strings of his harp. There is no gladness left to them; the very sheen has faded to grey.

He bites back tears that sting, presses blisters that sting, repents of a past that stings like poison.

 _Wanderer_ , says the sea,  _You are mine._

He cast his father’s heart there, after all. The last Silmaril, the last light.

 _I would my worthless heart still beat hard enough to break_.

Who is he, if not a brother? And what were ever Makalaurë’s hands, if they did not serve?

Tenderly, he lifts the instrument again and holds it close. Softly, he draws forth the salt-flecked ocean hopes.

It matters not that they are no longer golden.

**Author's Note:**

> Feanor striking Maedhros at Losgar comes from Oblivian03's "Of Fire and Fools".


End file.
